BY JULIAN CHENDER

In print | Published April 3, 2008

When I walked from my room on the west side of Parrish to brunch on Easter Sunday I saw the Easter chalkings that had sprung up in the early morning hours. “Bunnies are cool, but Jesus is cooler,” one said. Another wished passers-by “Happy Easter” and a third declared, “Peace be with you.” While I found these to be relatively benign, I took issue with some of the other chalkings, especially the large colorful one that spanned the breadth of the overhang behind Parrish: “Ultimate sacrifice becomes ultimate victory.”

The chalkings reminded me of comedian George Carlin’s addition to the Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt keep thy religion to thyself!” For me, and for many others with whom I spoke regarding the chalkings, religion is something very personal. I have no problem with people believing that Jesus died for our sins and that people can achieve salvation through Jesus Christ alone, or that, as the Frisbeetarians believe, when you die, “your soul gets flung onto a roof, and just stays there.” Religious belief becomes a problem when people turn it public and it becomes proselytizing or, even worse, serves as the basis for political policies, wars, etc.

In talking with some of the chalkers, I have come to understand that the chalkings arose not from a desire to proselytize but from the wish to express joy. Even though the chalkings grew out of the need for self-expression, I found them to be alienating. In religious expression, there exists a fine line between expressing happiness in what you believe and knocking what someone else believes. This is a result of the fundamentalist and exclusive nature of many religions, and their one-way-to-salvation beliefs. Such beliefs suggest that those who do not agree will not achieve salvation, enlightenment, etc. Though the only chalking that explicitly suggested this was the “Ultimate sacrifice becomes ultimate victory” (only Christians can share in Jesus’ sacrifice and therefore achieve “ultimate” victory), I still found the chalkings alienating and aggressive.

It occurred to me while talking with some of the chalkers that I would not have had such an intense reaction to chalkings from smaller religions. Chalkings, as a form of self-expression, mostly come from minority groups whose channels for self-expression and representation fall far short of those available to Christians. As a result, I find it easier to take aggressive chalkings from underrepresented minority groups in stride. Christians account for 76.5 percent of people in the United States, while Nonreligious/ Secular makes up 13.2 percent, followed by Judaism at 1.3 percent. Islam and Buddhism tie for fourth place at 0.5 percent. I understand that the demographics at Swarthmore differ from those of the United States as a whole. Coming from the U.S., however, and personally lying somewhere in between the 0.5 percent and the 1.3 percent, I found that some of the chalkings evoked a sense of the extreme majority flaunting its position. I understand very well that this was not the intention.

However, Chris Green ‘09 and Cecelia Osowski ’10 explained that some Christians find it difficult to be Christian on campus. Osowski explained that when she was chalking, "I wasn’t doing it to make a political statement per se, but there was some sense that there are Christians on this campus [that] feel really isolated and it’s nice to let them know that there are others out here celebrating."

Green later mentioned that, “The chalkings for me is about something which I feel isn’t expressed much other times [at Swarthmore].”

While I couldn’t find the religious break up in percentages of the campus, I understand that the demography at Swarthmore differs from the United States as a whole. For instance, I would guess that Christians fall below the 76.5 percent, while the other groups I mentioned spike to varying degrees. While Christians do not garner the same numbers here as they do in the rest of the U.S., I am confident that they constitute the dominant religion at Swarthmore. After all, two-thirds of the religious advisors are Christian.

That being said, though I personally did not like the chalkings, the people who created them had every right to do so. Their joy and the desire to share that with the campus motivated them to do the chalkings, and there certainly isn’t anything wrong with that.

Julian is a junior. You can reach him at jchende1@swarthmore.edu.

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